Walter Murch and The Search for Order in Sound & Picture

In the April 1998 issue of Mix Magazine, an article on the Godfather of Sound Design Walter Murch entitled "The Search for Order In Sound & Picture" is a great summary on his unique and over-arching views of aural theory and craft in movies.  Murch's approach has proven influential and thought-provoking to an entire industry, and there are just too many insights to post.  Instead, here's a link the article itself, a must read for everyone in Sound Design and Filmmaking.

http://www.filmsound.org/murch/waltermurch.htm

Tom Holman's musings on Walter Murch, Ben Burtt, and Skywalker Sound.

In an old article in Surround Professional magazine entitled "Something in the Water" Tom Holman writes about the pedigree of Skywalker Sound and its Sound Designers.  Some highlights:

On Walter Murch isms:

"Sound is like a three-ring circus; you don't find any five-ring circuses because the mind can't follow five things at once"; "Sound comes in the back door, while picture comes in the front; so sound has a subtle storytelling character about it that can be used to move an audience in certain ways without their conscious knowledge, and the corollary to that 'sound people will never get the recognition they deserve'"; and "We can think about sound as having a sharp foreground and an out-of-focus background, just like a camera does" (Side note: this shallow depth of field effect is achieved by opening up the iris, but lenses aren't always set up this way.  Citizen Kane is well-known for being shot with a deep depth of field).  These are paraphrases of classic Murch concepts, except the recognition issue corollary, which is added.

And then came Ben Burtt.  Hired out of USC by George [Lucas] about a year before Star Wars came out, it was certainly unusual to start on sound a year ahead of release.